R3, The Rebellion of the Old World
by Apple with a touch of pear
Summary: (rewritten). Lelouch had, after 19 years of hiding, decided to go back to the Ashford Academy in Japan. Though his motives were unclear, even he didn't foresee what was to come. And now that there is fighting once more, staying hidden is becoming increasingly difficult.


_There are many things we have seen through the years. Things no one can ever be truly ready for to behold, to take part in. And we were young. We were the youths that played outside in the shining sun when it reflected off those damned shining knights of darkness, when they came to take the country we loved and adored from us, not hesitating to kill a three year old in the way._

_**Blood dancing through the air like raindrops**_

_We've seen too much. We've done too much, and now we pay the prise. In these days of peace, when every other person lives in a peacefull slumber, we're the only ones awakened by the past, as often as not screaming, sweating, crying. Clinging to our blankets like it's the only thing that keeps us from falling apart completely as the demons inside of us laugh at us piteful excuses of humans._

**_It's us that's making it dance as we whirl bullets and turrets of air through their tight geography, mixing up the dance, changing the rithms to that of our heartbeats, watching as a little girl falls from the sky, an icy scream coming from her lips before she enters the cold flames burning below and is swallowed whole._**

_We were broken time and again until we couldn't be remade again. Forged into weapons of combat, fighting in one place or another, in one way or another, for one cause or another, all for our own gain, all against each other. We, the children of the war, too young to behold the horrors of war that are enough to overpower grown man, and yet did. We, the ones who shall ever dwell in war._

* * *

"You're no fun today," CC remarked, leaning over the couch as she breathed down Lelouch' neck. Lelouch shifted and tried to wave her away, closing the laptop as he turned around.

"I am not aware if being different than any other day," he said.

"You're too serious today," CC sniffed. "Acting shifty and secretive."

"Am I now," Lelouch asked, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He looked up at the figures painted on the ceiling he had just come to know. The room was bright with light and colour, reminding him of that place.

"I wonder about that."

* * *

Her hairs were messed up by the wind again and her cheeks red. Her eyes were shining and a single flower stuck in her hair, refusing to let go of the blue tangled mess as if bounced up and down on the beat of her steps.

"One day, you're mother's going to get a heart attack." Rivalz sighed as he closed the door behind his daughter to keep the summer airs out. His daughter let out an exhilarated breath. She leant against the wall, her blue hair so like his was in stark contrast with the red paint, static.

"You should have seen it, father," she said. "It was so..." she stopped, looking for the right word to fit this strange occasion. "transfecting."

"I'm sure it was," Rivalz said.

"I has such a wonderful view," Lilliëtte said. "I climbed the tree in the middle of the park, right next to the procession - you know, that big oak that you can see from miles off - and I could see everything! I didn't dare to climb too high, the branches got thin and I didn't dare to put much weight on them, but where I sat it was perfect. Just below the leaves and above the people..."

Rivalz smiled and patted her head. The stubborn flower that had bobbed up and down along with her dialogue finally fell to the ground.

"It sounds wonderful."

"It was. You should come with me next year, dad. It'll be fun."

"I'm sure it would be, honney, but-"

"I mean," Lilliëtte interupted, "all my friends always go with their parents, so why shouldn't we? I'll take you to all the good stalls and the succession is really great. I heard from my friend, who's father's in the comity that it's going to be even bigger next year because of the anniversary and, so it'll be extra grand. It'd be perfect."

"No,"Rivalz interrupted his daughter gently, a summer breeze letting of a storm along with the word. "I won't go."

The floor creaked when he shifted his weighted, as it did when he was alone and there was not a thing to fill the silence. He took a step back and went to the livingroom. the television was still showing the football match he had been watching. "This is not my holiday, Lilliëtte," he said when he heard the soft patter of her footsteps behind him, "and you'd be having more fun without me, sulking by your side."

"Why'd you be sulking?" Lilliëtte practically pounced on the remark.

Rivalz shrugged and sat down. The match was a recap. No match was being played today. No thing was being done today besides celebrating.

Celebrating what?

Rivalz opened his mouth.

_A car was slowly driving by, forcing the world around it to move in it's slow pace as the overpowering aura of the military reached out into the audience. Thankless, lost souls were strapped on the wagons, dragged away in the name of justice. In his name. A man Rivalz had once claimed to know. Claimed to have understood. Claimed to have befriended in the short perios of time they had know each other. Maybe that had all been a lie as well? There were so many lies, so many secrets._

_Nunnally had her eyes open - yet another lie - looking up at her brother - or was it? Rivalz did not know - with fear in her eyes, and all Rivalz wanted to know was why it was all necessary. Why it had all gone this way. Why they hadn't been able to go back to the roof of their school and shoot fireworks into the sky until the break of dawn brought them an explosion of its own when the first rays of the sun exploded on the horizon_

Rivalz shook his head violently, feeling sick. How many years had it been since that day? - Exactly nineteen, today - He could still recall it with such vivid detailed like it had just happened a moment ago, and he was once more holding a crying Milly in his arms, watching how the prisoners, those doomed souls, were released from their shackles.

"It's not my holiday," he repeated. His knuckles were white and his hands clenched. "I won't go, now let if go, Lilliëtte."

The next thing he heard was the paddle of her footsteps fleeing upstairs.

* * *

The sun was hanging lonesome in the sky, no cloud to keep her company in the endless blue.

It was one of those days you always wished for, but when it came, all you did was curse. Curse its bad timing and your work and the heat that demanded you go off to the beach to have a good time.

"Thank you Ted," Milly said. Ignoring the pull of the weather, she smiled into one of the many cameras in front of her. "This is Milly Asheford of Chanal Three news. I am currently present on the emperor's square, where millions have gathered today to celebrate the death of Lelouch vi Britannia and the old regime of Britannia." The pretty words were not hers. All Milly had to do with them, was the act of speech. The only contact she made with them was through her vocal chords. They didn't even touch the surface of her mind as they passed through her mouth, disguised as her own.

"We're currently waiting impatiently on empress Nunnally vi Britannia's annual speech."

this was what she had been reduced to. A puppet reciting words to all the other puppets out there.

She took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the thousand strings she was holding, resuming her monologue.

* * *

Lelouch closed his laptop once more when CC unscrupulously looked over his shoulder. He brushed her away.

"What is it this time, CC?"

"I want to know what you're up to." She ignored any trace of dismissal in his voice.

"So I came to see."

Lelouch remained quiet, his hands resting on his laptop like a mother hen on her eggs.

"What are you up to?"

"Not much," lelouch said.

CC's hand easily leaned on his shoulder and her hair brushed his when she moved in. "And what were you doing?"

"Less."

"That's very little," CC said, trailing her finger over his clavicle.

"It is." lelouch agreed, not showing any sign of discomfort. CC doubted he was any more conscious of her hand then she would have been if she hadn't planted it there deliberately.

"What are you going to do?"

Like there was a key to every lock, there was a question to every secret. CC had learned this a long time ago, back when there really were keys to every lock, and answers to every question.

"We," he said.

"What?" CC asked, surprised.

"What are we going to do," he corrected her.

A smile slid onto CC' face.

"what?" She asked again.

"We're leaving." Whether it was to signal that the conversation was over, or because he had only now noticed it there, Lelouch waved her hand away. And so CC left with the question that was more of a riddle than an answer.

* * *

There was one thing Nunnally hated above all about being empress, and that was the lack of privacy she had gotten since the day that she had been coronetted. That, and the reason why she had been crowned.

She was waiting, counting down seconds, but she did not mind. Not here, not on this day. She was seated in a small, rectangular room, adjacent to the balcony where she would make her speech in matters of minutes, when her peace of mind would be ripped away by a summons and she would know he had died exactly 19 years before.

But no, she mustn't think about that now. She was seated there, in a small, rectangular room, and there was only one other person with her. Luxury for her, as her regular following consisted of three bulky man, assigned with the task of protecting her with their lives. This was one of the rare breaths of privacy she could snatch during the year, and she intended to enjoy.

"Empress."

But of course she couldn't, when he was in the room.

"Yes?" She said levelly, draining all emotion from her voice.

There was a pause, and nunnally almost sank back in her privacile peace.

"Never mind." He said, his voice barely reaching her.

Suzaku had had too much privacy over the years.

they settled back into silence, but for nunnally, it had lost it's peacefulness, and his presence was inignorable.

"We have to go on." Zero said, moving toward the door that lead to the balcony. He opened it, motioning to her to go first. noise was pouring in. So much of it, that Nunnally wondered how the door had shut all of it out.

Nunnally sniffed at him and carefully pushed herself up from the chair. Her legs felt shaky as ever, but she felt stronger than she had yesterday and knew she would be able to stand this out.

She made her way to the door without looking at him and when she passed the masked man, she did not thank him.

The crowd was larger than last year, but it'd be smaller than next year, Nunnally was sure. People were looking at her for as far as the eye could see, waiting for her to deliver her speech. If she hadn't been able to clear her head in peace before she had to go on, she probably would have burst out in tears on the spot.

As it was, she felt detached as she pronounced words and formed sentences that she knew she would not agree with, if she had been paying attention.

Yes, on this day, and this day alone, she spoke only the words other wanted from her, even if she did not agree with them.

* * *

"Are you ready?" Lelouch appeared in the door opening just as CC was slipping into her pyjamas.

"Depends. Ready for what?" CC said, stretching suggestively.

"I told you already. We're leaving."

CC let her arms drop and feigned disappointment. "You always leave me hanging, don't you, Lelouch."

"You could at least humour me and sent me a quip back for once."

"I'm afraid that's not possible, seeing as you have already decided that your wits are tens of times sharper than mine, and all my cleverly wrought comebacks have long since been stamped on." Lelouch countered.

CC swung her hair over one shoulder. "It's not my fault they were so meagre."

"It is when you make them meagre by countering them with 'I did not know you felt that way about me, lelouch' every time, and walking off."

CC turned her back to Lelouch. "You make me sound petty."

"I am merely reconstructing the past."

A shimmer of a laugh escaped CC' mouth before she could lock it behind her hands. "You sound just like your father."

Reaching for a brush, she looked in the mirror to see Lelouch' reaction. She was certain she had won once again. His face had paled, his dark hair sticking out at odd angles. Only now did she notice the dark circles lining his eyes.

"As I was saying," Lelouch said, ignoring her last comment, "Are you ready?"

"And as I was asking, Ready for what?"

She revealed the curve her neck to him, brushing her hair to the other side of her head.

Lelouch' normally confident and formal exterior splintered into a thousand splinters as he went through his hair, messing it up even worse, his eyes flicking around nervously.

"Lelouch?" she asked, more worried than she liked to admit.

"I told you. We're leaving." But his voice held only an echo of the confidence it had held earlier.

"Leaving for where?" CC asked carefully.

She and Lelouch hadn't stayed somewhere for more than a couple of weeks for years. They hadn't had a place to call home yet, so when Lelouch had told her they were leaving again, it hadn't seemed as a big deal to her, but this told her it was more than she had first read into it. Much more.

"Japan." Lelouch said.

CC turned around. "What?" She almost spit.

"No. I refuse. I won't let you set a single step in that country again."

"keep your voice down," he said regaining some of his compositor.

"If you-"

"I won't."

CC quieted.

"Explain." She ordered.

"I have to go there." Lelouch said. "We have to."

"No."

Lelouch took a deep breath and CC could feel his irritation rising. "CC. You don't have a say in this. I'm not going because… I'm going because we have to. And because I want to lead a normal life."

"I take it you want to go back to the Ashford academy."

"Yes." Lelouch said exasperated, "But not because of the reason you think."

"You know they are celebrating your death there, right now. Do you?" CC asked, her eyes hard.

"I do."

"I'm not going to cry if you get yourself killed." She said.

* * *

**AN**

**So this is a remake of my earlier story, which has he same name. The only difference is that this one doesn't make me want to scratch out my eyes. plus, some plot-points will be changed and the story will be sort of different. So even if you read my old story, I advice you will read this one from the start, because I fear you won't be able to follow it later on. Also, the chapter will be shorted to make it easier for me to update in a timely fashion.**

**Anyway, seeing as I'm convinced no one reads these anyway, I just wanna get the following off my chest: **

**So I finally got around to this. I made some chapters in advance so I can actually update somewhat regularly. Anyway. It took so long because I have just been really busy. No fancy excuses, no pretty words. Only fact. I am sorry for it though, partually because I feel guilty for prommising something and then making you wait so long, partly because I only now realise how much I missed writing. **


End file.
